


just a boy inside a voice

by Kirjavi



Category: Tribe Twelve
Genre: Gen, Gen Work, Hurt/Comfort, noah gets a hug and a good rest: the fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:14:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24024901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kirjavi/pseuds/Kirjavi
Summary: For the first time in what feels like ages, he lets his fingers uncurl from around the camera. It feels so good to be home it feels unreal, hallucinatory, like another trap with exceptionally good bait. Noah falls facefirst down onto the familiar sheets of his bed and groans.Some good ol' fashioned gen comfort because god knows Noah's not about to get any in-canon and I have a very soft spot for this poor boy.
Relationships: Firebrand & Noah Maxwell
Comments: 8
Kudos: 18





	just a boy inside a voice

**Author's Note:**

> I've fallen into ARG/Slenderverse hell! It seems like this quarantine has reverted me back into edgy 14-year-old Kirjavi and frankly I'm not all that mad about it! Enjoy this fic all about me projecting onto Noah Maxwell!!
> 
> Don't ask me when in-canon this is. After he gets out of the boardwalk, but before he opens Milo's journal. Somewhere around there. 
> 
> Title is from "Take Your Time (Coming Home)" by fun. because it makes me big emo
> 
> Update 9/8/20: I do not support nor condone Adam Rosner's actions. I will not be deleting this fic as I'm able to separate the creator from the creation for the most part, but be gentle with yourself and be mindful of your triggers. To the people he hurt--I'm deeply sorry and I hope you can find healing.

Every fiber of his body aches. He topples down onto the familiar-smelling, familiar-feeling sheets on his bed and for the first time in what feels like months (what have probably actually been months), he lets his fingers uncurl from around the camera. It feels so good to be home it feels unreal, hallucinatory, like another trap with exceptionally good bait.

Being on the clean sheets, however, only makes the old blood and sweat and mud and whatever he picked up on the boardwalk feel (and smell) that much worse and Noah drags himself up once again. His sore feet, given that temporary reprieve, ache as he trudges to the shower. Even so, nothing feels better than taking off clothes long since gone stiff with filth and running hot water (clean water! that doesn't burn his throat or make him cough up blood!) through his hair and down his legs.

He stands under the shower blankly for far too long, letting the hot water scorch at his skin. The water runs down the drain muddy red, then clearer and clearer and a switch suddenly flips in his head. He begins scrubbing at his skin. No time to grab a loofah or sponge or towel. He scratches at dried blood? Mud? It flakes off under his nails and he shoves his hands into his hair, worrying at the grease and sweat and blood that clots his hair into mats. By the time he is clean, hair not clumping to his scalp and no mud or sweat or blood on his skin, the water has long since run cold.

Being clean is one thing. Feeling clean is another thing entirely.

He stumbles out of the shower and does a cursory job drying himself off. He sticks his hand into his pajama drawer and fishes out whatever feels comfy and clean and blindly puts them on. If the Observer wants to come after him again tonight and finds him in a ratty free college T-shirt and his whole dick out, that’s later Noah’s problem because frankly he can’t be bothered to do anything else but sleep right now.

He crashes into bed and pulls the covers up around him. He slits his eyes shut and waits for sleep.

It’s too quiet.

He lies in bed, every fiber of his body aching for rest. He can feel sleep hovering at the edges of his consciousness and he wants nothing else but to fall headlong into oblivion but he can't. He grits his teeth and stares up at the familiar popcorn ceiling of his room. Noah wants to cry, abruptly, and scream and dig his fingernails into his arms in frustration. This one simple thing. Just this. Just oblivion, for a few hours. He'd even take a nightmare if it meant getting out of this one.

When that all-too-familiar pressure builds in his head signaling one of the Collective has entered his space, he's almost resigned. Yeah, he thinks to himself. This might as well happen.

He grabs the closest weapon to him--thank goodness he's had the foresight to sleep with a knife under his pillow--and holds it lightly, familiarly, in his hand. He doesn't bother getting out of bed. Nothing matters anymore.

Reality rips and tears like Silly Putty being stretched between hands. The inevitable hand at the door. The slow creak inward. Then-- "Firebrand?" Noah asks incredulously.

 **Who else?** The pinhole eyes scrunch in a smile, his teeth shine in the night's half-light. 

"Why are you here?" he asks. His time on the boardwalk may have taught him many things, but tact still isn't one of them.

Firebrand crosses the few feet of space between them, feet making no sound on the carpet. Noah's hand tightens reflexively on the hilt of the knife before he makes a conscious effort to relax it. Firebrand _walked_ , not the startling unearthly flash steps he usually employs. What does he want?

 **I remember this night,** Firebrand says. **It was. . . hard.**

Noah laughs, a weak, twisted noise. "You here to twist the knife in the wound then, bud?"

 **No**. The bed creaks a little as Firebrand sits down at the foot of it. His eyes dance eerily, familiarly, in the dim.

Noah wants to cry a little. He is so sick of riddles. Why can't his future selves ever just talk like normal people? "Then what--" He stops himself. Takes a breath. "Then why are you here?"

Firebrand simply opens his arms wide, looking for all the world like an overlarge malformed crow. **Hug?** he asks.

Noah laughs in earnest this time. "Are you kidding me?" he asks incredulously. "Why would I--you put me through hell, man! I can't believe--why would I--"

Firebrand says nothing, but his eyes look ironically knowing, familiar in a way Noah refuses to acknowledge. _He looks stupid holding his arms out like that_ , he thinks viciously, and then without him even noticing he is leaning towards his future self, aching in a way that feels painful down to his bones.

Firebrand smiles and his teeth glint again. **That's what I thought,** he says smugly **. Come here. I know you, don't I?**

Noah sort of falls towards him, abruptly exhausted to the point where even trying to keep himself propped up is too much effort. Firebrand catches him, scarred hands coming up to wrap sturdily around his arms and holding him tight. He pushes his face into the crook of Firebrand's neck and takes a deep breath, as if by blocking out the outside world he would be safe. Tentatively, Noah wraps his arms around Firebrand. He’s warm--just a little too warm for a human being. _Unsurprising_.

Firebrand's arms come up around his back and he holds him tight. One hand sinks into his still-drying mass of hair, rubbing at the tension at the base of his neck. Noah shudders at the proximity of his hand to his pulse, steadily pounding away millimeters under his skin.

Despite himself, he relaxes. He can feel the rise and fall of Firebrand's chest against him ( _does Firebrand still need to breathe, then?_ ) and matches his own breathing to him. 

He doesn't know how long they sit there like that, curled around each other in the darkness. He doesn't know how long it's been since he's been touched by another human being outside of a fight for his life.

At some point he starts to cry again, big quiet tears dripping down his cheeks and soaking into the fabric of Firebrand's shirt. The god-thing doesn't say a word. He cries for himself, for Milo, for what he knows lies ahead of him and, even worse, what he doesn't know.

Firebrand lets him cry and keeps rubbing small circles into his back, like a parent soothing a sick child.

When he feels as if no more moisture could be wrung from his overworked tear ducts, he sniffs thickly. "Does it get easier?" he asks quietly.

Firebrand is silent for another long moment. **Easier?** he says. **No. No, it never gets easier.**

Noah sags against him, boneless, hopeless, exhausted.

Firebrand brushes the hair off of his forehead and reaches to grab a tissue for him. **It gets better, though,** he says **. That I can promise. It gets better.**

He nods. “Okay.” Noah says. He exhales shakily. “Okay.”

**That’s not nothing** , Firebrand says.

Noah nods and presses his forehead into the rough, weird-feeling fabric of Firebrand’s shirt. “I don’t want to go to sleep,” he barely whispers. He feels so _dumb_ , so helpless. Can’t even fall asleep because he’s so fucking scared of the dark.

Despite all the times Firebrand has ridiculed him or led him into the dark, his voice holds no mockery. **Nothing will harm you while I am with you** , he promises. **Sleep now. In the morning I will be gone, but this night will be safe.** He gently disentangles Noah’s arms from around him and shifts in the darkness to lean against the headboard. **I will be here**.

As if on cue, his eyelids grow leaden and he struggles to keep them open. He doesn’t know if this is another one of Firebrand’s well-timed tricks, or his own body finally accepting that he’s safe, but either way he accepts the inevitable and pulls the covers up around him.

Noah allows himself to close his eyes. It feels so good to feel safe for the first time in a long, long time. Firebrand sits by him and Noah curls up in the sheets, burying himself in their warmth and pressure.

He's out within minutes. In the back of his animal mind, the part of his brain that stays instinctively alert for threats and disturbances, he knows that there is another person there, keeping watch through the dark hours.

Noah wakes up the next day to honey-rich noon sunlight streaming through the blinds. He is alone. The bed sheets are creased and crumpled where Firebrand stayed the whole night, watching over him.

There's a note on the pillow. He picks it up.

In familiar scrawling handwriting, it reads, **"I remember waking up starving. GrubHub'd you some food. If you don't tip at least 30% you're a fucking asshat."**

In serendipity, of course, because his life is a punchline of comedically perfect timing, the doorbell rings.

Noah puts on some fucking pants and answers it. It is, thank goodness, the GrubHub deliverer, who looks askance at his disheveled appearance but takes the gratuitous tip without a word.

Noah sits down on his bed with sunlight pouring around him and shoves disgusting, hot, delicious fast food into his face like an animal. **Take it slow,** cautions another well-placed note. **The last thing you ate was a raw crab about two days ago.**

Finally, _finally_ feeling like a person again, he gets dressed like a human being and sits at his desk.

“Noah!” says Milo’s journal.

“I know,” Noah says. His voice is scratchy, but strong. “Time to open you up.”

**Author's Note:**

> Find me at a-flickering-soul.tumblr.com and please talk to me about the Slenderverse because I've gotten into it 10 years too late and no one will talk to me about it!!!


End file.
